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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadriel" data-source="post: 6466302" data-attributes="member: 4295">Experience gain in editions prior to 2e was primarily by gaining gold pieces of treasure, not by defeating monsters. That was a system that was not actually formally detailed in OD&D, although a description implied a fairly high 100 XP / hit die of monster defeated. Gygax gave NOTHING for defeating monsters.Spells are all about combat? Hardly. In OD&D, there was literally no way for a magic-user to cause damage through a spell until they hit 5th level. The biggest combat spell at 1st level was Sleep, which is actually a spell for avoiding combat. Magic Missile wasn't added until Supplement I: Greyhawk. Likewise, Protection from Evil, Charm Person, and 2nd level's Invisibility are really about not getting into combat. It's not until the magic-user hits 5th level and gets Fireball and Lighting Bolt that spells actually deal damage.Lots of magic items do damage or heal damage, but many are about recon or avoiding combat. Many, such as the various potions of control, can be used for either purpose. There are definitely magic items, but many are about detecting or moving quickly or invisibly / silently, or gaining influence over monsters or NPCs - almost as if there were three pillars.Even the OD&D monster list is not all about combat. Sure, you're probably going to fight goblins, kobolds, ghouls, zombies, basilisks, manticoras, hydras, dragons, purple worms and balrogs. But it would take a bloodthirsty party to slaughter centaurs, pixies, dwarves, elves, gnomes, and pegasi. There are plenty of "monsters" that are not meant to be involved in straight-up fights. Not to mention encounters with human types, who could go either way.This is a bizarre argument to be making in 2014, with Playing at the World available, with how much Mike Mornard has written on various RPG fora about what playing with Gary was actually like, with statements on various places from Dave and Gary while they were still alive, and with their players who have carried on their legacies. D&D was not a derivative of Chainmail, which was a miniatures wargame. You have to read Playing at the World and understand the role that other games, particularly Braunstein and Diplomacy, had on the development of D&D. It was a game where anything could happen - that was what changed everything.Wargamers were the original target audience of D&D. Wargames in this period weren't like Warhammer 40K or other "modern" wargames. They were either played out on boards with hexes and chits, like old Avalon Hill games, or on sand tables with miniatures. Each chit or miniature represented some number of men. The actual fighting was handled very abstractly, with the intent of keeping the game focused on strategy, position and tactical decisions. D&D was the same: there was combat, but it was done with quickly. There was no question of individual heroics or glory in battle. Damage was undifferentiated until some of the players started abusing this system by only fighting with iron spikes. If anything, they were all about the actual, stated goal of the game: treasure.Combat was not the primary element of OD&D, exploration was. There are rules aplenty for exploring a dungeon or wilderness in OD&D; spells, magic items, even racial abilities support exploring. And there's more about naval combat than there is about melee combat - eight pages of the 36-page book 3 are about fighting on the seas. Was this a "pillar" of the OD&D system? (No, but it was a hobbyhorse of Dave Arneson, who probably liked ship-to-ship combat better than man-to-man.) By contrast, there's literally one line about melee combat, and two paragraphs about surprise, in the same book. The "Alternate Combat System" is two charts with a note that says all attacks do 1d6 damage unless specified otherwise.As I said before, this changed as people played the game. Combat became more central and got more detailed; characters were made more able to survive long combats. From OD&D to 1e AD&D, a first-level cleric goes from no spells at all to as many as 3 first-level spells; fighters go from a maximum of 8 HP to a maximum of 14; with maximum Strength and a 2-handed sword, a fighter's damage went from 1-6 to 7-16; every spell level gained some direct damage or other type of combat spell; damage proliferated and PC types changed. This is all clear evidence that detailed melee combat became prevalent, rather than having been that way from the beginning.</blockquote>

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